For Texas man, a trail of deceit and death

1of 2This undated photo provided by the Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office shows Donnie Rudd. Rudd has been arrested on a warrant charging him in the 1973 death of his wife in suburban Chicago. Rudd, who is 73, was being held Friday Dec. 18, 2015 on $1 million bond at the Fort Bend County Jail outside Houston after being arrested at his apartment in Sugar Land, Texas. (Fort Bend County Sheriff's Office via AP, File)Photo: HOGP

2of 2In December 2015, Cook County prosecutors charged Donnie Rudd with murdering his wife Noreen Kumeta. Rudd is now in jail, in Cook County, Ill. He has pleaded not guilty and says he has colon cancer. In February, he was denied a reduction of his $4 million bail.

To some, Donnie Rudd was a renaissance man who transformed himself over and over, from a chemical engineer and leading expert on condominium law to a scientist in Sugar Land working with NASA to grow human stem cells in space.

With his ostentatious belt buckles, cowboy boots and love of guns, the Texan cut a dashing figure, but not quite as impressive as his tales. He used to be in the CIA, he told family, and had jumped out of helicopters. Once, he said a politician tried to have him run over on a quiet country road. Though he survived the wreck, his beautiful young bride of just 28 days was killed. For all those he captivated with charm and intellect - he was wedded five times in all - some who know him best find what is most incredulous is that the 73-year-old evaded the law for so long, even after he was suspected of shooting a client four times in the head. That streak ended in December, when investigators finally came knocking on the door of his Sugar Land home.

"We've always wondered how you can get away with so many things," said Rudd's first wife, Louann Hart, who lives outside of Fort Worth and is 72. "The things he has done to other people … it is beyond my capability of understanding."

Rudd was born a twin in Winnie, a small oil town west of Beaumont, in 1942, and Hart met him while he studied chemical engineering at Texas A&M University.

Like most people, she was enamored at first, captivated by his confidence, charisma and IQ. They married and moved to Chicago, where he attended Kent College of Law and they had four children. Rudd rose quickly through the ranks as a patent attorney at Quaker Oats, and in his late 20s he was elected to their suburban Chicago school board.

Domestic bliss turned suddenly soap opera messy. The couple had befriended another family with small children, and soon Rudd announced he was having an affair with the woman, Dianne Marks, the school board's president. In the aftermath, both couples split and Rudd moved in with Marks, though they didn't marry right away. The two couple's divorces were finalized in August 1972 and in September, it was the jilted spouses who wed first.

"Everyone got a house, a car, and four kids but everyone was with different partners," said Lori Hart, Marks' eldest daughter, who was 13 at the time. "But from my perspective at that age, Donnie was really interesting."

A year later, in August 1973, Rudd came home and stunned Marks. He announced that he was marrying a 19-year-old co-worker. The wedding, his second, was to be the next day. Marks, who was raised a strict Baptist, was devastated and shocked.

"I made some agreement with myself that if I could have Donnie I would spend eternity burning in hell," she wrote in her journal. "I bargained with the devil for my soul, and Donnie's out getting married."

Rudd spent the eve of his wedding with Marks, then woke up the next morning and put on his suit. Photographs show him laughing at the ceremony with his bride, Noreen Kumeta, a blond, dark-eyed beauty.

Insurance beneficiary

Twenty-seven days later, in September 1973, police found Rudd cradling Kumeta's breathless body in the passenger seat of their 1972 Pinto Wagon on a rural road in Barrington Hills, an affluent suburb of Chicago.

Rudd told police that they were driving home when an oncoming car suddenly appeared in his lane. As he swerved to avoid it, Kumeta's door swung open and she flew out. When he found her, she was missing the back of her head. Rudd said she must have struck a large rock nearby that was matted with hair and blood.

By the time Kumeta reached the hospital, she was dead. No autopsy was conducted, and a coroner's inquest determined it had been an accident. Her death certificate said she had likely suffered a spinal fracture.

Within a week, Rudd had moved back in with Marks. Soon after, he received two life insurance payouts totalling $120,000, according to court documents. The bulk was contained in an extra policy Kumeta had signed up for at additional cost during their three weeks of marriage.

Rudd told Marks and her children that a well-known politician had sent a hit man to get him. Maybe Marks didn't want to know more, or perhaps she was afraid. At home, Marks and her children didn't discuss it. A few months later, in May 1974, the couple finally married, making Marks Rudd's third wife.

Meanwhile, Rudd became a star, specializing in condominium law, and in 1983 he helped Illinois legislators rewrite state laws overseeing the complexes. Soon after, he began hosting his own legal show on cable TV. At one time, his law firm had more than 2,000 clients, mostly homeowner associations.

A missing check

But it wasn't long before cracks appeared in his larger-than-life image.

By the late 1980s, clients said Rudd had promised them considerable settlements which they never received, according to complaints filed against him with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.

Rudd told one client, Joseph Massani, that he had won a $40,000 settlement from his employer, Delmar Computing Inc., in a disagreement over a patent. But Rudd didn't mention that the corporation had been dissolved, so collecting the money would be impossible.

Two other complaints followed the same pattern: Rudd told clients he had won them hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they never received their payout. He had never filed the lawsuits, the state commission found, even though he was being paid generously to represent his clients.

At around the same time, in 1988, Rudd filed for bankruptcy.

Two years later, in 1990, he met Lauretta Tabak-Bodtke, a 59-year-old interior designer who was embroiled in an argument with a former business partner. She hired him to represent her.

But after waiting for more than a year, Tabak-Bodtke was frustrated. Rudd had told her that she had won about $800,000 in her lawsuit, then disappeared for weeks, her daughter, Stephanie Tabak, said. He said he had been in the hospital receiving treatments for kidney cancer. Over the years, his relatives say that he told them he had cancer at least half a dozen times when money or other trouble struck.

In April 1991, the designer threatened to file a complaint against Rudd but agreed to meet with him first. The evening before their appointment, her husband saw a check from Rudd for $9,300, according to court documents.

The next day, two of her neighbors saw Rudd's car, unmistakable with its MR CONDO vanity plates, referring to his status as a leading expert on condominium law. Two neighbors saw Rudd leave at 3:30 p.m. The occupant of the adjoining townhouse told police he heard loud noises at about 3:20 p.m., around the time police believe Tabak-Bodtke was shot.

At 7:30 p.m. her husband found her in their kitchen in a pool of blood. She had been shot four times in the head, according to court documents. There was no sign of a break-in or a struggle. Rudd's check was missing.

Police later discovered torn pieces of what they believed to be Rudd's check to Tabak-Bodtke in his house. But the gun was never found, and a grand jury didn't indict.

In the 1991 state disciplinary review of Rudd's legal activities, he invoked the Fifth Amendment when it came to his handling of the Tabak-Bodtke case.

Return to Texas

It was a good time to return to Texas.

Marks took a job in Plano, where in 1992 she filed for guardianship of Rudd, then 50, saying he suffered from "unipolar manic-depressive syndrome." The illness caused Rudd to "enter into contracts which are detrimental to and wasteful of his estate," his application said.

Marks was granted guardianship over him. Soon after, he withdrew his name as an attorney in Illinois, rather than be disbarred. The state commission found he had been dishonest and fraudulent in his representation of clients.

Marks had been in remission for breast cancer, but it reappeared in 1995. When it became clear she did not have long to live, her children moved her to Chicago, where Rudd came to say goodbye. He pulled out documents containing the titles to her assets and tried to get her to sign them over to him, Lori Hart said.

"Nobody's signing any papers," the daughter told him.

He left.

Five months after Marks died, in November 1996, Rudd married his fourth wife. In Houston, he found a fresh start with Mary Bret, a psychiatry medical resident, and new business ventures.

He filed dozens of patents and opened several questionable Internet companies.

At one, a startup called Viatech, Rudd worked with Patrick Ferris, who had marketing experience with national technology firms. Ferris met the investors Rudd lined up and was impressed - even though his new partner at times made strange remarks.

According to Ferris, Rudd once told him, "If you ever want to get away with murder, you put the gun in the ventilation shaft, and it will suck away the fingerprints."

Their business' site was generating furious traffic. But Ferris began to suspect that it wasn't legitimate. He confronted Rudd about it, and they had an argument. Ferris quit and said the company folded.

By that time, Rudd's nine-month marriage to Bret was also on the rocks. In July 1999, she moved out and filed to annul it, saying almost everything Rudd had told her about his life was a lie. He hadn't received a congressional medal of honor for his service in the Vietnam War as he had claimed, and neither did he have the vast amount of money he told her he had. Bret asked the court for a protective order, saying Rudd had hit her twice, disguised himself to follow her and placed screws in her tires.

Within months, Rudd found his fifth wife in Sugar Land. Emma Leising told the Chicago Tribune that she met him on Match.com and that he proposed to her soon after, on the very same day that his divorce from Bret was finalized.

Estranged family

In real life, Rudd's immediate family had long been estranged.

His children barely talk to him and his twin, Ronnie, a retired managing partner for the accounting firm Arthur Andersen, said though he tried to help his sibling, over the years they drifted apart.

"It just got to the point that most of the family members said, 'We don't need to deal with this anymore,'" Ronnie Rudd said.

In the fall of 2000, he said Donnie Rudd persuaded their 91-year-old father to sell his Hill Country house and move in with him and Leising in their Sugar Land home.

On Oct. 23, 2000, his father, Eddie, changed his will, leaving all of his real estate to Donnie and appointing him executor of his estate. He left nothing to his grandchildren, "knowing that Donnie will continue to be mindful of their needs," according to the document. Six days later, on Oct. 29, he died.

Donnie Rudd did not call, text or email his relatives. Only on the day after his father's funeral did he leave a message on his twin brother's answering machine: "Dad died, and I buried him yesterday," he said.

It stunned his brother, who hasn't talked to him since.

In 2001, Rudd filed for bankruptcy again. At the time, he was gearing up for one of his most ambitious plans. In 2002, he joined Regenetech Inc., a startup formerly known as BioCell Innovations, as its chief scientist and director of intellectual property.

The company captured national attention after it acquired patents for stem cell research and secured the license to use a NASA bioreactor. Scientists at Johnson Space Center had developed the device in the 1980s to investigate the effect of micro-gravity on human tissue. The idea was that space-like conditions more accurately simulate how stem cells grow in the human body.

Regenetech had promise, but the reality, like most everything in Rudd's life, was far more complicated. Most of its former chief executives couldn't be reached or declined to comment. A former Regenetech consultant, Dr. Mehboob Hussain, who directs the Cell Biology Core of Diabetes Research Center at Johns Hopkins University, said he ended the partnership because he doubted the company's methods.

"The science was not really as rigorous as I felt it should be," Hussain said.

In 2009, Regenetech settled a lawsuit over financial disagreements and sold for $100 million. Rudd retired, and he and Leising divorced the following year, in 2010. A NASA spokesman said it ended its licensing agreement with Regenetech in 2013 after the company went bankrupt.

Body exhumed

In nearly every new iteration of Rudd's life, one constant remained. For 25 years, Stephanie Tabak, the daughter of the slain Chicago interior designer, called or sent Rudd an email on almost every anniversary of her mother's death.

"You killed her, but part of her is still here, and that's me," she told him each time. "I'm not going to give up."

Tabak, a 56-year-old insurance fraud investigator, followed Rudd online, monitored his companies and for years sent tips to police and federal agencies. In 2013, Arlington Heights police reopened her mother's case. When they asked Rudd about the 1973 car accident that killed his young bride, his conflicting, vague answers made them suspicious.

Kumeta was exhumed that same year. A pathologist in Kane County, Ill., conducted an autopsy that concluded her injuries were inconsistent with hitting her head on a rock, as Rudd had speculated, but rather the likely result of several blows to the head.

Last December, Cook County prosecutors charged Rudd with murder in Kumeta's death. In court documents they noted that he remains a suspect in Tabak-Bodtke's killing.

For the first time in his tumultuous life, Rudd is now in jail, in Cook County, Ill. He has pleaded not guilty and says he has colon cancer. In February, he was denied a reduction of his $4 million bail. His attorney, Tim Grace, didn't return multiple calls.

"My mother used to say there is a thin line between genius and madness and Donnie had a foot on each side," said Marks' daughter, Lori. "It's a relief to know that he's in jail. It takes the burden off all of us."

Lomi writes stories about immigrants, the complicated process of immigration, and its consequences. If you're an immigrant, lawyer, critic of the current system or a supporter, an ICE or Border Patrol agent, someone who feels they unfairly lost their job to an immigrant, an asylum seeker or a deportee, send tips and ideas to lomi.kriel@chron.com.